I'm working on my second block for the
Fat Quarters Star Quilt Along . It's a fairly easy one. Large pieces, and not a lot of them. Easy, peasy, done in the proverbial shake of the stick. Hah, that's what I thought, but I should know better by now, than to think something is easy to do, which means I don't pay close attention to what I'm doing. I got everything cut, and all the individual components sewn, and took them to the ironing board for pressing. And that's when I discovered it, an oops moment.
I'd sewn a couple of the units together wrong. Drat, some ripping to be done. But, not to worry, I have a ripping tool that reduced the task down to, literally, seconds. It is my handy, dandy $10.00 Walmart mustache trimmer.
Someone showed this to me at a quilt show once, and my jaw dropped with being so impressed with the simplicity and the speed of it. All it takes is to gently pull the two pieces apart, and gently touch the blades of the trimmer to the threads,
and presto, it quickly cuts those threads, without getting close enough to the fabric to cut it. I had 2 of these to rip out, and it literally took less than 30 seconds. So, I was able to get that done, the pieces sewn together the correct way, and finish my second quilt along star.
I've noticed lately, that my sewing machine hasn't been working the way it should. It wasn't doing its part in the "let your sewing machine do the work" for feeding pieces through the feed dogs and presser foot. I was reading on someone's blog that they were researching for purchasing anew sewing machine, and asked if she could pass the info on, since it looked like I'd be needing a new one. The last time I was in a store that carries machines, I was looking at a Bernina, on sale for $800.00. I clean my machine, and get all the dusties out fairly frequently, because we sew together, a lot. I use a small paint brush to get at the places that are hard to reach. Last night, as I was sewing away, and getting more and more frustrated because the fabric wasn't feeding through properly, I had one of those sudded "aha" moments. I took the throat plate off of my machine and looked at the feed dogs. Where there should have been space in between them for them to come up into the throat plate to grab the fabric, there was lint. So much lint, that the paint brush I use to clean them with, couldn't budge it. I had to use a pin to get in there and get the lint out. Then, I put the throat plate back on, started to sew, and worked....... the feed dogs grab the way they should, it's not getting snagged in the seams, and it's working the way it should. Phew!!!!!
this book which I bought for the quilt on the cover. They have named the quilt "Make Your Point", and since I'm terrible at coming up with quilt names, I'll use that one. I have enough of the 16 patches now made up to do the entire centre of the quilt, and a couple of the borders. I think I'll do the remainder out of strips, so I can get this one done. Here's what I have so far: 
It's a bit different from some 16 patch and pinwheels I've seen, due to the changing direction of the pinwheels. I love the secondary pattern that the pinwheel blocks form, almost like the 16 patch blocks are framed by the triangles. I'm planning on focusing on this quilt until I get it done, except, of course, that I need to find another leader and ender project. And then, there are the Fat quarter stars quilt along blocks. I'm a bit behind on these. The 3rd block is still in pieces. If I have a bit of time after writing this, before I have to head to work, I'm going to see if I can't it at least partially sewn together.
There are lots more design walls to see over at Judy Laquidara's Patchwork Times If you have a few minutes, go on over for a visit.
